


Lead me upstairs

by sshysmm



Category: Ripper Street
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-06
Updated: 2016-03-06
Packaged: 2018-05-25 03:56:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,062
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6179245
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sshysmm/pseuds/sshysmm
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A brief moment of happiness for Reid and Ms Goren; set in S1.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lead me upstairs

Cool fingers wandered the skin of his shoulder and torso, soothing flesh that had felt like fire for months on end.

The landscape of his body still felt new, but there was unexpected relief in feeling someone else explore it for the first time. Her intrepid touch mapped out ridges of scar tissue, valleys left by shrapnel, occasionally sliding along the raised rivers of veins.

Her mouth settled afterwards, lingering where fingers had traced, eliciting a gasp from him. His skin tickled when her curls fell around her face as she leant over him, areas of unreliable nerve activity now sparking and flaring at this new stimulus.

He watched her greedily, wondering at the gentleness of this woman.

The dawn light from the window made her a silhouette, dark hair like a wild halo around her head and shoulders. Still he could see the smile on her lips: a quiet, crooked little thing, as though she were thinking of her own private joke.

He turned towards her, filled with a desperate need to know what that joke could be. He reached up to cup her head, his hand working into into the still-sweaty hair at the base of her neck. He kissed that sardonic smile urgently.

“I’m sorry,” she breathed when they broke apart. “I did not mean to hurt you.”

“It was no hurt,” he shook his head. “You have a physician’s touch,” the smile on his lips was genuine, reaching up to crinkle the corners of his eyes.

Another kiss. She inched closer to him under the blankets, pressing the length of her body against his.

He was propped up on the bad arm now; it began to shake under him, drawing her attention immediately.

“Rest!” she pushed his chest with her palm, knocking him to his back more easily that he would have liked. She remained propped on her own elbow, gazing down at him with an even broader smirk.

This smile made her cheeks round and red; he drank in the expression of happiness; her relaxed pose open to him with the blanket bunched casually at her hips. The joy of it was near to a physical pain.

She let out a chuckle as he stared, dropping her eyes and biting her lower lip. She reached a hand out to his chest again: palm, fingers, then knuckles dancing lightly along the border that divided his body now.

He had been made to feel that this border could not be crossed, that he lay permanently now in a new world. One that had nothing but loss; grief; absence. The barren terrain was a slowly cooling lava flow, solidifying, choking him.

His past was beyond reach, that world where he had not known what it was for a physical task to be beyond him, where his wife had never looked on him with pity tinged with repugnance. Where his body had not reminded her continually of the child that could not be recovered.

But what was that border to the soft-spoken woman in the orphanage? Her hand wandered all over him, casting down barriers and disregarding the distinction.

She must have noticed the hint of sadness that crept into his face. Her expression was conciliatory; kind to a fault. She leant over him and kissed him again, and their faces were woven into a bower of her hair.

He pulled her nearer, guiding a leg over him and smoothing the soft skin at the small of her back. Soon he must leave, but not now. Not yet. He has time to make up for first.

She moved her mouth beyond his reach, playfulness still sparkling in her eyes. “And what about resting?”

“I am sure I shall be very well rested with you atop me,” he surveyed her with a flirty smile as she straightened momentarily, reaching up to sweep the curls back from her face and chest. He lay gazing in rapture at the image, all contours of her body rising before him, her eyes closed softly for an instant as she arranged her hair behind her back.

When she returned to him, lowering herself steadily, his hands tightened on the flesh of her thighs, heat roaring through his body. She moved gently, unhurriedly, and he made himself be patient. His mind swam in a haze of sleeplessness and rushing currents of hormones, revelling in a last chance at freedom from case files or criminal profiles that day.

Afterwards, her body tucked in the crook of his good shoulder, he finally felt ready to catch up on months’ worth of broken sleep. The streets outside had started to waken, however, and no doubt soon the orphanage’s residents must need attention. He sighed and brushed sweaty strands of hair back from his forehead. If she was asleep he would not wake her.

He looked down, found his questioning gaze met: her grey eyes looked as tired as he felt, but her face also matched his peacefulness. If he could stay here, there would be no need to break the pleasant calm with awkward utterance; no need to categorise this or assert when he may or may not return.

The creak of bunkbeds in another room saved him from trying to find the words to leave. She sat up instantly. “I must see to breakfast,” she clambered over him unselfconsciously, retrieving her unused nightgown from the back of the door and slipping it on with one smooth movement. And with that and a twist of her hair she was simply the mistress of the orphanage again, busying herself with stoking fires and boiling water.

Perhaps she, too, wanted to avoid any defining conversations.

He dressed slowly in between sips of the thick, dark coffee she brought, whilst she bustled around him. He stopped to marvel at the practiced speed with which she laced her own corset and pinned her hair up, but she was too fast for the hand he reached out as she brushed past, speeding to the sound of the first children awake and padding around.

The bulky three piece suit and heavy jacket he wore felt vastly inappropriate indoors now; with a nod of gratitude, he edged around the kitchen table towards the door. He was relieved to catch a glimpse of her smile and the rush of colour to her cheeks and neck as she nodded back.

**Author's Note:**

> You wouldn't believe how annoyed I am that Munch's Madonna wasn't painted until 1893. But that's totally what I'm using as reference for Deborah putting her hair back, even if it's an anachronism.
> 
> Title from David Gray's song of the same name, from the album A Century Ends.


End file.
